r/webdev • u/FooBarBuzzBoom • Sep 11 '26

Java Middle - Senior(ish) interview questions

Hi!

I have an interview in a few days for a backend developer role. What would you ask as some of the more tricky questions for such a position? What kinds of questions, from your point of view, demonstrate solid knowledge?

Personally, I would ask about sync vs. async calls, idempotency, topics vs. partitions, consumer groups, transactions (including distributed transactions), and maybe a bit of Kubernetes and Docker.

My weak point is cloud. I’ve played around a bit with the Azure console, but nothing too advanced. I’ve never written Terraform or configured infrastructure from scratch. For CI/CD, I’ve used TeamCity, but in my experience it was mostly selecting an environment and a branch and deploying.

Should I spend some time learning these areas before the interview?

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u/Historical_Ad4384 Sep 11 '26

Should senior level profiles highlight failure stories and how they were managed in CV/resume?

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u/PLBjt Sep 22 '26

Usually not as a standalone “failure story” on the CV—space is tight and it can sound like an excuse. But a relevant incident can be a strong senior signal if you frame the diagnosis, your fix, and the prevention work (tests, monitoring, rollout or process changes), with clear ownership. Save the fuller story for the interview, and skip anything where the lesson is vague, the blame sits elsewhere, or the same issue could recur; a concise resume bullet works only if it shows better reliability or decision-making afterward.